Rant Archives - Trisha Gee

Reading Code Is Hard, and tips to improve

December 3, 2024November 22, 2024 Trisha Gee

We spend more time reading code than writing it

This week's video for Dave Farley's Continuous Delivery YouTube channel is me ranting about why reading code sucks, and offering some advice on how to improve.

"Every programmer occasionally, when nobody’s home, turns off the lights, pours a glass of scotch, puts on some light German electronica, and opens up a file on their computer. They read over the lines, and weep at their beauty…."
https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks

The original idea for this video is from my presentation Reading Code Is Harder Than Writing It, and from my blog post Reading Code is a Skill, an older post which has only become more relevant in the modern age of AI.

Flaky tests are poisoning your productivity

June 7, 2024 Trisha Gee

Picture of Trisha's face frowning and the title "Flaky Tests"

I freaking HATE flaky tests.

The first time I worked in an environment that had real Continuous Integration with Actual Automated Tests that Actually Ran, it was like... freedom. We literally got the green light that our new code was working as expected, and that any changes we made hadn't broken anything. And refactoring... before then, I don't think I had ever really refactored anything. Even a simple rename was fraught with danger, you never knew if reflection or some sort of odd log-file parsing was dependent upon specific class or method names. With a comprehensive suite of unit, acceptance and performance tests, we had this blissful safety net that would tell us "Everything Is OK" after we'd done simple or extensive refactoring.

Except.

It’s not you, it’s them

December 28, 2021 Trisha Gee

I believe in asking for help, for being vulnerable about the things we don't know, especially if we've been in industry a long time. We can't possibly know it all, and it's important to normalise that.

So I wrote a blog post about the thing I was struggling with. Yes, it also had the lovely positive of asking The Internet to solve my problem.

Shocked I was, shocked (no, I was not) to receive responses suggesting that perhaps I was a bit rubbish as a developer.

Who’s “Allowed” To Review Code?

October 24, 2020 Trisha Gee

Guess what? A conversation I was having on Twitter got me excited enough to blog again. Perhaps reading Twitter isn't such a depressing waste of time after all.

The problem with code reviews is that it is too easy to end to end up with code targeted at the lowest common denominator of the ability of the reviewers.
— Ihe Onwuka (@mazihe) October 21, 2020

Reading Code is a Skill

December 3, 2024September 7, 2020 Trisha Gee

Picture of a stick person reading computer code

I'm inspired to write this post because Someone Is Wrong On The Internet. Of course a more accurate statement would be "I disagree with some aspects of what someone on the internet said, even though they have an entirely valid point of view". But that's less catchy.

I’m so tired of it all

September 19, 2020March 10, 2015 Trisha Gee

We work so hard to promote equality, to fight for the rights of people who are not middle-class white men, and time and again it just feels like we're not getting anywhere. International Women's Day highlights the issues that face women all around the world, and make our women-in-tech problem look like a genuine First World Problem, and yet we can't even get that right.

Should you notice I’m a woman? Should I care?

December 14, 2020February 10, 2014 Trisha Gee

So, following on from my observations of being an outsider at FOSDEM because I'm not an open source developer, I do have another story to tell where my female-ness is actually relevant.

Why is it News when a woman becomes CEO?

December 12, 2020January 20, 2014 Trisha Gee

I’m pleased to see that GM has hired the "best person for the job" as their new CEO – that does seem like a good idea. I’m happy her gender did not get in the way. What makes me uncomfortable is the international news coverage of the decision of this large manufacturer to hire a … Read more

LinkedIn Etiquette

December 14, 2020November 6, 2013 Trisha Gee

For no reason other than LinkedIn communications are starting to irritate me, here's my personal LinkedIn Etiquette guide. Feel free to disagree with it all.

On The Evil Of Stereotypes

December 15, 2020July 27, 2012 Trisha Gee

I attended (one way or another) two events last week that got me thinking

The first was Girl Developers will Save the World - a session that had me a little confused as to whether that referred to me, or actual girls, i.e. those that are not yet legally classed as adults. The second was the Remarkable Women Twitter party the following day.